As use of computer games has proliferated, so have inappropriate activities of some users of such computer games, including attempts to obtain unfair advantages by cheating. Examples of such cheating include exploiting known bugs in game software, using software programs (sometimes referred to as “bots”) to take automated actions on behalf of users, and using software programs to modify data and/or functionality within the game (e.g., to provide enhanced capabilities, to change user scores or other associated data, etc.).
Various techniques have been tried to prevent cheating within games, but such techniques all suffer from problems. For example, in situations in which a user is using a client computing device to access functionality provided by one or more remote game server computing systems, techniques have been used to monitor the client computing device's setup (e.g., programs being executed) in an attempt to identify known cheat-related setup configurations, but users may attempt to hide such setup configurations on their client computing devices in various ways, and such techniques are limited to only those setup configurations that are known in advance of their use.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to implement improved techniques for automatically reducing cheating in online game environments or other interactive execution environments.